Friday, November 19, 2010

What happened in London

Vik, a friend from Wombourne writers, and I set off for Euston in time to meet my cp, Kimberley for lunch. Kim is an American, living in Italy and although we've been working together for a while now we'd never met. This is a special week though as her wonderful debut novel, Ask Me If I'm Happy was released from Diiarts press and she was over for the launch. We met up at Euston and set off in a cab for John Lewis where we'd arranged to meet Phillipa Ashley, one of the coffee crew authors. Lunch lasted three hours that just zipped by in a flash. Kim is every bit a beautiful in real life as she is in her emails and we had a blast.Once Kim had left to dash off to a literary event at Oxford, Vik, Phillipa and I went girly window shopping around the beauty department. Somehow we ended up in House of Fraser where the wonderful Laura, who was brilliant, gave us all a make-over with her gorgeous mineral make-up. (That is so going on my Christmas wish list).Smelling delicious and immaculately made-up, Phillipa sprinted off for a meeting with her agent whilst Vik and I went in search of a cab to take us to Waterstones in Piccadily where we had been invited to a Tweet-up with Jane Holland, Talli Roland, Kate Nash, Jenny Bardon and Barbara Alderton. We were at the taxi rank when one of the cycle rickshaw cabs pulled in. So, we took our life in our hands and were pedalled away down Oxford Streets dodging in between the buses and admiring the posh shops and Christmas lights all the way to Piccadily.We met up with the rest in time to celebrate Jane Holland's birthday which was made even better by a phone call from her agent telling her she had just landed a three book deal for her historical novels!By the time we'd celebrated we were running late for the RNA winter party. We managed to grab one cab and half our party set off in that. Vik, Talli and I tried to find another cab. With time ticking on and no luck, Talli suggested we walk down to the Ritz as there were sure to be cabs there. Using her charm Talli then persuaded the wonderfully helpful doorman complete with his frock coat and top hat to stand out in the traffic and flag us down a taxi, so we were escorted into our vehicle in style.After that came the RNA party and I'll blog about that tomorrow!

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Nell is an award winning author living in the heart of the Black Country with her husband, three children, a tank of tropical fish, a crazy Cockerpoo called Teddy and whatever is left of her sanity. Welcome to her world...